Defying the Lycan King (Kira and Derek) novel Chapter 291

Chapter 291: We Did It!

Further back, Kira and Derek dragged a half-dead Umbra between them.

The Umbra hung between them, more dead than alive, one arm across Derek’s shoulders and his feet dragging through the leaf litter.

Kira had one hand locked round his wrist, her eyes shut. Lux stretched along the invisible tether that still connected the dying Umbra to its master. The direction burned clear in Kira’s mind.

"That way," she said, pointing through the denser part of the forest. "She’s heading for the borders. If she reaches human territory she can mask her scent completely."

Derek’s head turned. "How far?"

"Nine miles, maybe less. We must not let her go."

Derek’s huffed out a breath. "She won’t make it." He turned to her. "Do you think you can see the tether without this one?"

"I’ll try?" Kira replied, opening her eyes.

They dropped the body and started running.

The woods went past in a blur of black trunks and wet ground, and for a while neither of them spoke because there wasn’t breath spare for it.

"Kira."

"Yes?"

"Let me take her," Derek said. "The physical fight. Let me put her down and hold her there, and then you finish it however you need to."

"Derek—"

"You’ve been drained twice tonight. You burned a vessel out of a body less than an hour ago and I watched the colour go out of your face while you did it." He glanced across at her. "And you’re carrying two."

Kira ran three more strides.

"That’s not fair."

"No, it isn’t. I’m doing it anyway."

She wanted to argue about how she was the Nexus and this was hers to do and she hadn’t come this far to be handled like something breakable.

And then she thought about the small, fast heartbeats she’d been carrying through three days of that stronghold, and she swallowed the whole thing down.

"All right. You handle the body. I’ll handle the rest."

Derek nodded and they moved faster.

They came over a rise, and caught a flash of deep red between the trunks a few yards ahead.

Before they could close the distance, Umbras exploded from nowhere. They came in from three sides at once, out of the trees and out of the bracken and from behind them.

Derek took the first three before they’d finished arriving.

Kira went back to back with him without a word and let the light off her hands in a wide arc, and four of them came apart and dropped where they stood.

When the last one fell, Derek was already turning towards the ridge. Kira’s body opened up into white, Lux pouring out through her in a rush of light and muscle, and beside her Derek’s Lycan tore up out of him.

They closed the distance in under a minute.

Lydia was still running in human form when Derek’s beast slammed into her from the side at full speed.

The impact sent her flying. She hit the ground hard, rolled twice, and scrambled up with a snarl.

Darkness exploded around her. In seconds a huge black wolf stood in her place — larger than any wolf either of them had ever seen, eyes burning pure red. She towered over even Derek’s Lycan.

She was bigger than Derek.

Well, Lux said quietly. She is such a massive thing.

She had a wolf.

All those years, Lydia had sat at that table in Moonfang with her sad little story, telling anyone who’d listen how the rogues had come for her. How she’d never shift again. How Rolf had married a broken woman and hadn’t that been generous of him.

She had never lost her wolf to rogues. She had been an Alpha-level beast the entire time.

When Lydia’s beast snarled at Derek, Kira felt no real fear for her husband. Derek’s father had bound Lydia’s supernatural power years ago. Tonight she could only fight with muscle and teeth. And Kira trusted Derek’s skill completely.

The two beasts crashed together.

Lydia was good. Kira would give her that much, watching from twenty feet back with her light banked and her body ready. She was fast for her size, and she fought like something that had been fighting for a very long time, driving forward, trying to get underneath and get her jaws round Derek’s vulnerable parts.

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